Steel Ribbon
by january blue
Summary: [fuugen 1shot] He's such a baby. That's her grand discovery. It's about his hands and his sword and that he's young and alive. Oh, and also that she's young and dying. [1st champloo fic. be gentle]


**steel ribbon  
**_because un-metaphors are boring_

He's a big baby, she realizes with a croaky laugh. Doesn't get his way and he goes on a rampage. Has a tantrum. (A bloody, careless, selfish tantrum.) It's not like he's got anything higher in mind. Not like he gives a flying shit _anyway, _huh? He's a big, poofy-headed baby and she can't _stand _it.

Is this the worse timing for realizations? A little bit.

She watches blearily as he dances around them with his flashing ribbons of steel, and they fall. One by one. Red flying through and mixing with the air. Atom by atom, the death toll rolls up. She watches his sandals when they fall and lie forgotten. She watches his face as an enemy gets a lucky slice across his cheek. (And damn it all, she can't do anything.)

He's a baby. His eyes flare up.

(Blood mixes with the air.)

And she sees red.

But he's okay. Of course he is. He fights on and whips the steel ribbon around their throats and another one down. (She can't _do _anything.) He's gritting his teeth when the last one falls, standing there among the bodies. Victory. Yeah. Right.

And slowly, _slowly… _he turns around to peer at her through squinted eyes.

Then he looks away so fast it's almost gratifying.

"Hey, Mugen…" she whispers, hoping her voice is stronger than she thinks it is.

Which it isn't.

His white undershirt is soaked through with dark crimson. He's still gritting his teeth as he peels it off of his tight stomach. And if you think that just because she's lying on the ground with her arm half hacked off at the shoulder, she can't enjoy a good piece of eye candy…

…you're wrong.

His chest is kind of dirty and hard and thin… and… She half smiles for him. Because he's a big baby and he'll be pissed otherwise. And God knows she doesn't want that tantrum directed at _her._

(It's bloody and red and beautiful and too much _him._ She's slowly finding that she can't take too much of him.)

He throws his sword to the side. It lands with a hollow _clunk_ on the wood planks of the bridge.

The pulsing throbs throw themselves across her forehead as, without a word, he squats down where she lay pathetically on the ground. She has to fight the urge to groan in embarrasment. (A weird time to notice that) a few stray hairs are falling into his eyes, and he's looking pointedly at anything but her. She snorts lightly. Because she isn't quite surprised. After all… he's too old and too young and too gross and _dammit, _it's not like he gives a shit _anyway_.

Her foggy thoughts amuse her faintly as she watches his stubbly jaw carefully. It moves when he speaks.

"You dyin'?"

She decides not to notice the sharp edges on his voice and turns her head slightly, looking instead at the river nearby. "Guess we'll see," she murmurs faintly.

"Fuck," he states eloquently.

His large, tan, calloused hands start to move like poetry as they curl around the cloth of his shirt and press it against her wound, pushing down hard to stop the bleeding. Simple enough. And about as easy as swallowing nails. Or maybe his pride.

The pain explodes inside of her eyes.

She screams.

He stops. Falters. Hesitates.

…Well.

That's new.

Her eyes shoot up at his face, desperate, weak, pleading. Oh, _God, _it hurts. Red-rimmed and falling through the ground into the fire and it _burns. God, _make it stop. Please, _please._

The fire crosses between them and she realizes that she's clutching his wrists with her hands, trying to claw him off.

His eyes look away. He can't face her like this.

She wants to die. She really does.

"Fuck," he repeats gruffly. And then he pushes down again.

The shrieks rip out of her and she can't see anything else. Just the white-hot pain exploding memories in her head. Her back arches and she tastes the searing blue emptiness when his tough fingers land on her face and her hot tears are flicked to the ground.

…After weeks of it. (Or maybe minutes. Who knows?) Finally it's enough… the light fades. The light fades.

(Day by day the tragedies roll up.)

And the searing pain fades to dull thudding.

"You aren't gunna die," he informs her, more hair falling to cover his face. Like, that's that.

"Oh, really?" she scoffs, tugging her eyes open against the darkening blood loss clogging up her vision. She won't look at him. How could he friggin' _do _that? The bastard. "I beg to differ…"

She looks instead at his hands. Her tongue freezes. She's broken the skin of his poetry hands. They're tan and torn up and bleeding. And, here's the kicker—_she _did that. And he didn't stop her. She has to work a bit harder to keep the breaths going in and out.

She's trying so damn hard not to think about it while he delicately tears his discarded shirts and bandages the wound.

He doesn't say anything, but she distantly feels a feather-light _something _brush against her cheek.

Wait, now.

Whose tears _are_ those?

Then she's staring straight into him and he's crying…

—_Oh, God. _Pull yourself together, Fuu—_I can feel it_—You can do this. You can—

But he's _crying._

(_You can do it—_but she can't.)

…and suddenly he's so blaringly, horribly, vulnerably nineteen.

With his torn-up hands-like-poetry pulled back into his lap and shaking. With the shallow cut on his cheek dripping slowly. With his hair all flat on one side and poofy on the other.

He's so messed up.

He's such a baby.

She's grinning.

Because he's too much the right age and too much the right attitude and too much the wrong guy and she can't take too much, she said. Didn't you hear her? _She said _that he doesn't give a shit. She said that she thinks he's annoying. That he's got his word and that's about it. God, _he's such a baby…_

Didn't you hear her?

Judging from feel of his scratched-up fingers timidly climbing between hers, neither did he.


End file.
